If you ask us, spellcheck is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century, right up there with the airplane and Hot Pockets. But it's not perfect, and it won't catch every mistake that you make as you dash off a first draft.
Take homophones, for example: a homophone is a word that sounds the same as another word but has a different meaning and spelling.
Then there are words that don't sound alike… but they look alike (hello, lose and loose).
In your rush to get your brilliant ideas on paper, it's extremely easy to write one word when you mean another, all while spellcheck sits idly by, twiddling its compu-thumbs.
You should definitely use spell check, but you shouldn't completely trust spell check. While it's skilled at catching typos, it can't save your writing from those sneaky words and phrases that sound or look alike. That's what you have your faithful sidekick Shmoop for.
Examples of Commonly Confused Words
(Click on "Common Mistakes" below to get more deets on all these pairs.)
- affect vs. effect
- compliment vs. complement
- past vs. passed
- illusion vs. allusion
- weather vs. whether
- presence vs. presents
- site vs. sight vs. cite
- principle vs. principal
- stationary vs. stationery
- whole vs. hole
- accept vs. except
- already vs. all ready
- elicit vs. illicit
- altogether vs. all together
- breath vs. breathe
- costumes vs. customs
- advice vs. advise
- lose vs. loose
- definitely vs. defiantly
- desert vs. dessert
- through vs. threw
- assure vs. ensure vs. insure
- its vs. it's
- your vs. you're
- into vs. in to